Iraq soldier deaths trial resumes

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A trial has resumed in Baghdad of two former Ba'ath party officials accused of the murder of two British soldiers six years ago.

Staff Sergeant Simon Cullingworth and Sapper Luke Allsopp of the Royal Engineers were captured by militia fighters near Basra in March 2003.

Their deaths were allegedly ordered by local Ba'ath party officials.

The accused men, Faisal Al Saadoon, 56, and Khalaf Mufdhi, 58, appeared at the Iraqi Higher Tribunal.

The panel of five presiding judges heard evidence from the first of the prosecution witnesses about what happened near the town of Al Zubayr at the end of March 2003.

But the BBC's Nicholas Witchell said that the evidence that this witness gave, anonymously and from behind a curtain, contradicted virtually everything he had told British Military Police when they investigated the killings.

The British Army say the two soldiers took a wrong turning, were ambushed by local militia and taken to the local Ba'ath party headquarters where, it is alleged, the two accused ordered them to be shot.

Deaths filmed

Sapper Allsopp, 24, was from north London and Staff Sergeant Cullingworth, 36, was from Essex.

Both were members of 33 (EOD) Engineer Regiment, a specialist bomb disposal unit of the Royal Engineers, based at Carver Barracks, Wimbish, Essex.

They were both wounded when militia forces ambushed their convoy on the outskirts of Zubayr.

While some members of the convoy escaped, the pair were taken to a local Baath party headquarters and then to an Iraqi intelligence base, where they were shot dead.

Footage of the two soldiers lying wounded near their vehicle was broadcast by Qatari-owned al-Jazeera, prompting condemnation by the British government.

The soldiers' graves were discovered a month later and their bodies were exhumed.

But according to the witness at the trial, neither of the accused was present at the scene of the ambush, and he said he had never heard anything about party officials giving orders for the soldiers to be killed.

During the trial the senior judge asked the witness if he was frightened of something, but the witness said he was not.

The case was adjourned for two weeks.